NoshBar's Dumping Ground

Astute readers may notice that images are now working, meaning I could add the world's ugliest test-UI too.

Also shown is how complex stick figures can be built from scratch.

Not show in action are the "move stick figure" and "rotate stick figure" options.The "move" action works just peachy.The "rotate" action, well...

See, in TISFAT, if you wanted to rotate a stick figure, you had to manually rotate the points. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been, because I never had the patience to do that kind of thing (sicko's!).I _would_ have added the rotation option, but I had no idea how to handle mouse clicks on a rotated entity.Now I do.

So, rotating an entire stick figure between frames means you can still edit the poses just by clicking on the stick figure like usual.

However, as this is prototype stage, I'm cutting myself some slack, in that the order of the rotations, or the center of which, must be wrong... when I rotate the stick figure, it goes way off screen.

That aside, progress is pretty good.

There is also an option to keep one "stick"/"limb" at the same angle to the one it is connected to, quite handy.Except that I'm a mathematical genius * -1, and can't seem to get the angle right. I think I'm not transferring something during tweening...

Anyway, it's still fun, and that's what counts.Especially when the world around me is covered in running combusting screaming monkeys.

First there was the fine motor skills of an elephant.Then there was TISFAT, which worked for a while, mostly, almost.Then there was an unreleased tisfatTOO, which did nothing but frustrate me.

But now that tablets are common-place, and there are touch-screens actually capable of being useful (eat dust, resistivity!), I decided it would be fun just to see what animating a stick figure on them would be like.So I whipped up a quick prototype to test it... and, well, damn. I've got the disease again.

It may not look like much, but the original TISFAT started with something way more basic/hideous.AND it runs on iPad, TouchPad, and PlayBook already, huzzah!

So, the BlackBerry PlayBook went on a firesale of sorts yesterday, and I had a voucher from my awesome work, so I naturally had to go get one for super cheap.

It took about 2 hours in total to get the SDK installed and Drumpster ported... The WebOS changes making it a straight-forward port.

So now it really is time to start making a sensible directory structure for the builds, getting some sort of source control up and running, and finally proceeding with work on improving Drumpster and taking it forwards, instead of sideways.

Fortunately being awesome is not a crime, unlike being a foreigner...Due to me not coming from an English speaking country, and clearly not having any IT skills, I will have to leave the UK soon, hopefully ending up in Sweden, after which I can hopefully focus on making Drumpster something usable.

Bathrooms are awesome. Not one is the same, even if they’re cloned in a factory, after just one day of use, they’re a unique snowflake (containing the same decaying matter as the others).

Much like next-to-a-dustbin being the safest place to stand to be free of cigarette smoke, the inside of a toilet bowl must be the furthest place away from urine in public bathrooms.If it’s not acting as lubricant on the perhaps-present seat cover, it’s all over the floor making sure it’s free of insects and snakes (and who doesn’t like stomping in puddles and splashing stuff at people, giggling with glee?).

While the water in the toilet might be urine-free, you can almost be guaranteed that it will be filled with a squirrel-sized poo, warmly snuggled in its entire-forest toilet-paper nest, waiting for the eggs to hatch. Sometimes you may even be lucky enough to spot one of the parents sitting on the maybe-there toilet seat, keeping watch, defending the hive (which is essential, as screw-holes in the stall walls remain as the only hint that locks, or entire doors themselves, once lived there).

Mostly they’re still sitting there staring back at you because the toilet no longer flushes, through malfunction or fear of having to touch the creations in the bowl. But mostly there are those that constantly flush, sending the squirrel-family into a frenzied tumbling, as if they were squirrel-alligators wrestling for territory, in the midst of a death-roll fight. And being continuously emptied, those toilets never have the pressure behind them to send the fight outside, and reunite the squirrel family deep under the sea (if only flushing handles weren’t made of lead).

Like the toilets, the taps seem to be plumbed into the same supply of water in PlentyLand. This however, is a good thing, as the last thing you want to do is touch the oddly-non-reflective chrome handles.

The soap-dispenser handles are safe though, as no one uses soap, they just run water so that it looks like they’re washing their hands, because no one wants to look like they’re a pig, and using soap is basically like coming out to your parents. However, sometimes a piggy must get angry that the soap is judging them, resulting in a battered, drooping hanging piece of pity that remains where the dispenser once was, bleeding down over and past the sink, mixing with the pee on the floor, screaming “whyyy?” the whole way down.

The hand-dryers always state that they’re the hygenic method of drying your hands, which not only sounds like some sort of government conspiracy, but it’s not eco-friendly, all that electricity usage, and you really care about the environment, so you use the paper towels.They also make great little balls that you can use to practice shooting hoop with, every time a reminder of why you’re not in a team somewhere.

I was originally going to write a short entry about how people are so ready to apologise for things that aren’t really their fault, but never do for things that directly are.

I initially thought about how someone would apologise for elbowing someone as a result of a sneeze, but not for saying something mean.I thought that it was difficult for people to apologise when it is actually their fault, admitting they were wrong, and formulated some super intelligent random theory about humans, which I was going to take time to step down off the horse on my pedestal to share with you puny lesserlings.

It was when I first thought about writing this in a different way, that made me realise my arseness, originally brain-written as:“People will apologise for something that is the result of an accident, but not for something that is a result of who they are.”

And well, there you have it. It’s who they are, why should they apologise?Sure, you want the apology, you’d like someone to be sorry that they hurt you… but they don’t owe you, love them for who they are, or go somewhere else.